


Frost

by doublejoint



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: “It’s pretty,” Galen says, but he’s looking straight at her face, and damn it--he’s smoother than he lets on, smoother than she remembers when he tries.
Relationships: Galen Erso/Lyra Erso
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Frost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [incognitajones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/gifts).



> thank you for prompting! i hope you like it--i saw 'snow' listed and i just went for it lol (i'm definitely excited for winter to come where i am). i'm not too familiar with any of the non-R1 material but i did my best not to contradict it where i could.

It snows on Lah’mu. Of course it does; they’ve seen the mountain peaks, but as the planet tilts away from its star the cold comes to their farm. The frost they are prepared for, though Jyn is not; barely five and all she really remembers is the tightly-controlled weather on Coruscant, the balmy temperatures and warm nights, something artificial that seems more natural to her than this. The wet ground and rusting machinery are endlessly fascinating to her, as much as her dolls and the structures she builds from twigs.

Lyra’s fascinated too, by the mud beneath her feet and the way it tracks everywhere, the machines once mass-produced but customized and modified to the point where it’s difficult to tell that they’d once worked the same way, harvesting the moisture in the air at the same pace and making the same noises. The advances they make here are incremental. Thinking of them in advance is difficult, and never oriented toward some concrete goal. Can they make this one machine slightly more energy-efficient? If they move that one a few meters over, will it produce more? 

The frost changes all of that. They swap the vents and filters, turn up the heat, fiddle with the dials, trekking across their plot of land, feet for once not sinking in the mid because the frost has hardened the ground. Lyra spends all morning alone, the ground and the machines, tools and rags. In the distance, she can spot Galen, tailed by Jyn and their old droid, rusty and moldy from the moisture, dots bobbing next to the smudge of the silo. 

The snow comes that afternoon, as Lyra draws closer to Galen, meeting in the middle of the field. Jyn has gone into the house, bored of her father’s explanation, and taken the droid in with her (likely to power down). She has to keep stopping, putting her gloved hands into her coat pocket, tucking the tools into their bag again, and when she does she stares up at the sky. It’s a flat grey, the snowflakes seeming to melt back into the clouds but growing closer to her face, landing and melting into her skin. She’d been on Coruscant too long; she’s spent too much time on ships in empty space, a different kind of cold, dry and thin. Her hands press close to the warmth of her stomach, through the gloves and the lining of her coat and her warm sweater; she could take them out and finish this bit. 

“Lyra.”

She turns; she feels her eyes focus as if there’s a sound to them, like a camera lene or the optical sensors on a droid. Galen’s brows are knit in confusion; he’s holding out a wrench in one hand. 

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” she says. “Great, actually.”

She reaches for Galen’s bare free hand with hers (and in her haste she leaves the glove in her pocket), cold and slippery with grease, and pulls it to her, slotting her fingers between hers. His breath comes out in a surprised puff of air, and he pockets the wrench.

“It’s pretty,” Galen says, but he’s looking straight at her face, and damn it--he’s smoother than he lets on, smoother than she remembers when he tries.

(That’s putting aside all the times he makes her soften every day, taking her hand as they sit by the fireplace, when he tries to teach Jyn how to cool, his face when he listens to her, as if the things she’s told him so many times, the research she’d put aside for the sake of survival, still at the same stage of conjecture and old evidence, is something new to him, the way he says he will never tire of simply listening to what she has to say.)

Lyra nods. Galen can’t hide his smile as he leans in to kiss her. His lips are cold and dry, chapped from the wind; hers aren’t much better. His palm is slowly warming in her hand, or perhaps hers is getting colder. It could be both, but it’s most likely the latter. They’ll have to retreat back into the coat pockets soon, but not quite yet. Lyra needs to finish up this one machine, perhaps with Galen’s help, and were she only a few years younger--a few months, really, when they’d first arrived--she’d have let her reservations take over and pull away, but not here and not now. It’s ridiculous to be ashamed of kissing her husband, out in the open on their farm in the snow, when the possibility of anyone who isn’t their child or their droid finding them is minimal. And if someone else does, let them see. There is room for the intense rush of love and adoration that sweeps through her, that presses her to let go of Galen’s hand and reach up to touch his face, his wiry beard scratching against the calluses on her palms. There is room for anything, in all this space.

“Do you think it’ll stick?” Galen says.

There are flakes in his hair, giving it the appearance of being greyer and whiter than it really is. Lyra stands on her toes to kiss his nose.

“Yes.”

The ground is dotted with white; the snowflakes are not melting into it fast enough and they’re beginning to come down harder. Within a few hours, it could be much worse, and they have a machine to fix and a house to maintain--if only the weather measurement tools they had were better; if only the planetary comms were set up to monitor that sort of thing. (Galen has toyed with the idea of building his own weather satellite, but it’s still only a notion he tosses around like a small pet with an insect between its paws. Their day-to-day work keeps them busy, and what they can do for Saw a little busier.)

“I’ll finish this,” says Galen. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Lyra lowers her hands, tucking them back into her pockets and the gloves, and noticing, all of a sudden, how cold and stiff they’ve gotten as they begin to tingle at the tips. 

“Be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

Lyra laughs; the sound dies on the wind but not before it reaches Galen’s ears. His smile is crooked, revealing a flash of teeth; she has not seen him wear this expression so often in such a long time.


End file.
